In the event of major war, the identified industrial base dedicated to the Army would be unable to produce sufficient materiel to support combat consumption before reserve stockpiles were exhausted. Two separate issues are implicit in this statement: war reserves are inadequate, and the dedicated industrial base is too small and too slow. As a result, the Army’s ability to fight a conventional war of any extended duration must be seriously questioned.
That was from Roderick Vawter’s 1983 work, Industrial Mobilization: The Relevant History. I think the same conclusion continues to apply today.
One of the key issues of mobilization seems to be the tradeoff between minimizing lead time to meet war requirements of existing weapons, and the “inevitability of obsolescence of military equipment.” If you optimize for scalability, then you stockpile munitions, machine tools, and facilities for rapid deployment. But that can take resources away from R&D on radically new capabilities, as well as work against the psyche of adopting those programs.
Here’s a good stat on the Korean War that suggests a phased approach to mobilization should occur well in advance of conflict:
It was estimated that if $500 million were spent to purchase long-lead-time items of equipment for aircraft production that were put in place prior to M-Day, mobilization production capability would be increased by about $18 billion over the first 2 years. The savings in mobilization or war reserves would have been In the ratio of 36 to 1.
And perhaps one of the most valuable lessons that should never be forgotten is that even in the height of mobilization emergency, the voluntary nature of economic activity has an important place for making sure resources move to where they contribute the greatest value:
Another point about World War II that needs to be mentioned is that much more than an industrial mobilization took place; there was, in effect, an economic mobilization as well. Instead of moving directly to the organizational schemes of the Industrial Mobilization Plan, the United States engaged in a hit or miss, evolutionary development of organizations and controls which, in the long run, directed our economy toward the goal of winning the war.
In a classic sense, then, World War II was the total war not experienced by this country before or since. Controls were imposed on wages and prices; productive capacity and raw materials were allocated; and fiscal and monetary policies were directed toward controlling inflation and demand, and toward financing the war. Centralized manpower controls, however, were never achieved.
There was not centralized registration, as in Great Britain and Germany; nor were there compulsory labor assignments. Workers in 35 essential industries were “frozen”, but this action simply required a worker desiring to move to a new job to obtain a certificate of availability.” If other historical precedents have relevance in terms of future mobilization planning, so must the voluntary nature of manpower mobilization in World War II.
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